A SHORT SCALE OF TRAFFIC CLIMATE ACROSS FIVE COUNTRIES

Year 2020, Volume: 17 Issue: 46, 673 - 702, 30.10.2020

Yeşim Üzümcüoğlu

Abstract

The Traffic Climate Scale (TCS) measures the perceptions and
attitudes of road users about the given traffic context with three dimensions:
external affective demands, functionality, and internal requirements. The TCS was
developed in Turkish and then translated into several languages. The main aim
of the current study was to develop a shorter version of the TCS and to test
the factor structures cross-culturally (i.e. Estonia, Greece, Kosovo, Russia,
and Turkey). In addition, the five countries were compared in terms of their
perceived traffic climate.  Confirmatory
factor analysis was used to test the fit of the models. The results yielded two
different Mini-TCS versions that were developed based on the previous longer
versions. The two Mini-TCS versions included 22 items and 16 items
respectively. The goodness of fit findings showed that both versions of the Mini-TCS
are useful short measures of the TCS in Estonia, Greece, Kosovo, Russia and
Turkey. The comparison analyses showed that five countries had both
similarities and differences in terms of their traffic climate. To illustrate,
Turkey, Greece, and Kosovo had the highest scores in external affective demands
and internal requirements dimensions; whereas Kosovo, Russia, and Estonia had
the highest scores in functionality dimension in both long and short versions.
The findings suggested that both versions of Mini-TCS are effective tools that
can be used to understand how road users conceptualize traffic context in these
five countries. 

Keywords

Traffic Climate Scale, Traffic climate, road users, traffic safety

Project Number

645690

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